Research

In this study, we investigate how bystanders interact with smart internet connected devices (e.g., Nest Camera, Amazon Echo Show). Through a semi-structured interview study (N=19) we uncover bystanders’ privacy perceptions, their privacy needs, and their current privacy enhancing behaviors around smart devices. The findings uncover the needs for unambiguous privacy notices and hardware-based control mechanisms in smart devices. Based on our qualitative analysis, we identify and define ‘tangible privacy’ mechanisms as those privacy control and feedback mechanisms that are ‘tangible’, i.e., manipulated or perceived by touch, and of ‘high assurance’, i.e., they provide clear confidence and certainty of privacy to observers. Overall, our study provided evidence that people prefer hardware based tangible control and feedback mechanisms. They also want privacy notices that are easy to interpret and clearly communicate the device’s actual state to everyone in the vicinity of the device. As the lead researcher, I designed the interview protocol, and performed the qualitative analysis.

Method: Semi-structured interviews, Qualitative analysis (thematic analysis)

Publised in CSCW 2020

In this study, we investigate how bystanders evaluate smart devices that incorporates tangible privacy mechanims (i.e., tangible control and feedback mechanisms). Using virtual prototyping, we designed prototypical voice assistants that resemble the real world voice assistants and provide users with tangible control and feedback mechanisms. By comparing particiapnts’ perceptions of risk, trust, reliability, usability, and control for these designs in a between-subjects online experiment (N=261), we find that users considered devices with tangible built-in physical controls to be more trustworthy and usable than non-tangible mechanisms. Our findings present an approach for tangible, assured privacy especially in the context of embedded microphones. As the lead researcher, I designed the study, conducted surveys, and performed the mixed method analysis.

Method: Survey Design, Qualitative Analysis (thematic analysis), Quantitative Analysis (statistical analysis), Prototyping, Experimental Study Design

To Appear in CSCW 2022

In this study, we investigate how different redaction techniques influence users’ online photo sharing behavior. We also study how the use of trusted hardware platforms (e.g., intel SGX) influence their online photo sharing behavior. We conducted a between-subjects online experiment where we meause users sharing likelihood of their photos based on different types of redaction techniques. This study is on-going.

Method: Survey Design, Quantitative Analysis (statistical analyses)

Currently Under Review

In this study, we provide a generic analytical model for evaluating sparseness of planar topologies for wireless networks. We derive an analytical expressions that can be used in determining average node degree and the topology size without running simulations or prior to the deployment of real systems.

Published at WiOpt 2015